


The Things that Remind You

by nameless_bliss



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Established Relationship, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Hurt/Comfort, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Masturbation, Phone Sex, Post-Old Oak Doors, Present Tense, Separations, Spoilers for episode 49B
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 08:06:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1891560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nameless_bliss/pseuds/nameless_bliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the things that remind you that you're completely, utterly... alone.</p><p>Cecil tries to adjust to his new life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Things that Remind You

It’s the things you don’t think about.

Cecil hears the blaring drone of the alarm clock, but refuses to open his eyes. Like always. He knows the mechanical sounds will stop soon enough, he’ll pretend they never happened, and drift back to sleep. He knows that in two hours, the pleasant mewling of baby howler monkeys will slowly fill the room, gradually increasing in volume until he is gently pulled from sleep, signaling that it’s time for him to start his day. He just has to ignore the harsh beeping for a few more moments. Then he’ll sleep again. Like always.

It doesn’t stop.

Ten seconds pass.

Thirty seconds pass.

It doesn’t stop.

He tries to be reasonable, but his patience (always an uncertain concept in the early morning hours, even more so now seeing as it’s Monday) has worn thin, beaten down with each impossibly loud cry from the alarm clock. The sound is so piercing, so unnatural, and so impossible to ignore completely enough to fall back asleep.

Seven seconds pass.

“ _Carloooos_ ,” he finally snaps, grumbling through the remnants of sleep that try to stall his vocal chords. He barely succeeds in detangling one arm from his cocoon of high thread count sheets as his motor functions slowly return to him. Peeling his eyelids apart requires herculean effort, and he gives up before the bright rays of sunlight streaming through the open window can penetrate his vision. Instead, he chooses to flop his freed arm across the other side of the bed blindly. “Turn off that damn-”

His arm lands on a cold pillow.

It’s suddenly very easy for his eyes to snap open and glance to his boyfriend’s side of the bed.

He remembers.

He crawls across the empty bed and presses his finger against the ‘OFF’ button. He doesn’t go back to sleep.

 

It’s the things that just sort of… happen.

The kettle whines on the stove. Today it seems very displeased with the state of the burners.

“Why don’t you clean more often?” It chides in its metallic, nasal tones. “I _know_ you spilled tomato sauce down there on Tuesday. That’s why it smells like burning in here. You’re lucky the smoke detector isn’t-”

Cecil takes the kettle off of the heat, and the voice quickly fades along with the soft hum of  boiling water inside. He wants to tell the kettle that it’s Thursday, and _Sunday_ is the day he cleans the kitchen, so it’ll just have to suck it up until then. But he doesn’t. It never listens anyway.

He holds the kettle over his sleek, pristine thermos. As he pours, he leans his face over to inhale the steam that rises so beautifully from the liquid, smiling as the intense heat tickles his nose. With one hand, he drops in the tea-filled infuser, which lands with a satisfying ‘plop’ and a tiny splash. The floating infuser bears a plastic ornament in the shape of a cat, which bobs across the top of the water as the leaves in the mesh basket below spread deep, rich color like ink. Cecil gives a satisfied grin to the figurine, admiring his recent handiwork: a snapped-off paw and an eyepatch carefully drawn with an illegal permanent marker he keeps hidden in the crawlspace. He grins, because now it’s a figurine of _his_ cat. His perfectly imperfect cat.

The coffee pot still releases thin trails of blue smoke whenever it gets plugged into the wall socket, so Cecil picks up the makeshift hand-held filter basket he’s been using for the past few months. He holds it over the other thermos, this one large and battered and looking like it has survived at least one or two explosions. The kettle holds just the right amount of water, like it always does. He’s done this enough that he has it down to… well… to a science. He smirks, savoring the smell of the still-brewing coffee that’s so much darker and spicier than the ‘weak bean water’ they have at the lab. It’ll still be scaldingly hot when he drops the thermos off at the lab on his way to the station. Like always-

He remembers.

The kettle slips from his hand, clattering to the floor and spilling the last few drops of hot water on his toes. He doesn’t notice.

He pours the coffee down the drain.

 

It’s the things that make you feel ungrateful.

He can hear the breath pressing thick, labored sounds through the receiver. It crackles a little, even though the reception is excellent. He wants to put his phone on speaker to free his hand, but that would mean taking the voice away from his ear, and that is unthinkable. One hand will have to be enough. He presses the phone even closer, trying to smother himself in the sound.

‘ _Louder,_ ’ Cecil wants to say as another deep exhale fills his ear, ‘ _Louder, please, louder… until I can’t hear anything else, until your voice is loud enough that it brings you here to me_.’ But he doesn’t say any of this. When he finally manages to open his mouth, the only sounds that spill out are a frantic whine, and two broken syllables: “Ca... _ah_ -rlos…”

“Yes, yes… Cecil…” comes the response, equally broken. The sound drips languidly into his ear, but still manages to shoot a bright pulse of heat through his body, making his skin tingle. “So good… so - _fuck_ \- please, faster, _faster_ -!”

Cecil complies immediately, twisting his wrist until he finds the angle, the one he’s used to feeling from Carlos’s hand and not his own. The sensation is so familiar, so desperate, so right, and so inexpressibly wrong. His back arches off of the bed, high enough that the oversized t-shirt slips up his torso, bunching up around his collarbones. The pile of fabric is tantalizingly close, and Cecil cranes his neck to bury his face in the soft cotton. He inhales through his nose as deeply as he can, fighting the shallow gasps that have been sustaining him for the past several minutes.

The shirt isn’t his. That’s why he’s wearing it. The smell spreads through his nose, enveloping him completely. “Carlos,” he moans again, both as a needless cry and an identification of the familiar scent overwhelming his senses. The smell joins the angle of his hand and the voice groaning in his ear and for a moment, they converge, creating a physical presence. Cecil can feel the weight of his boyfriend pressing against him, smothering him into the mattress as he writhes up further into his touch. The low, shaking exhale in his ear spreads the warmth of breath across the side of his face, leaving damp patches of heat on his skin. “Carlos, I-” he puts it to words because it’s too incredible to fight, “I can _feel_ you, I-!” His voice breaks off into a whimper as the feeling disappears, replaced by the cold of the empty air against his hot skin, the awareness of his own hand as he continues to thrust into it, faster every second.

“Oh, Cecil,” Carlos grunts in a voice like music, full of awe and understanding, “I can taste you. I can taste your skin ah- _ahh_ -and your mouth and…” There’s silence for a few moments as he tries to catch his breath enough to keep speaking. Cecil can practically see his jaw moving, lips working too hard to try and form the sounds that his throat won’t produce. He finally manages a long groan, and his voice is in his control again. “Cecil, Cecil I love you. I love-”

“I love you too, Carlos,” he interrupts, their continued professions overlapping through the tense heat that he can only hope they are both feeling, “I love you so much, and-” He stops himself, hearing the sentence continue in the privacy of his mind: _‘And I wish you were here. I wish you were inside me, I wish I were inside you, I wish we were anywhere together in any possible combination of limbs and bodies and blood and sweat and that the void was only above us and not between us.’_ The thoughts swim through him like the slow coiling of heat in his gut, following the same waves of pleasure. He wants to say them out loud, but they decided long ago that words like those only made things worse. They agreed to only say things that they could have in their shared moment, not things they could only wish for with quickly-disintegrating levels of hope. He keeps these truths to himself, and shares a new truth instead. “I’m close, Carlos, I’m so close... gonna…”

“Me too, oh god me too, Cecil, just a bit-”

“Please, _please_ , let me hear you, _Carlos_ -”

And his ear is filled with the most gorgeous moan, one that he’s heard dozens, hundreds, thousands of times, he can’t remember which. There’s an infinity of pleasured sounds in his ear, and the clear image of the accompanying look of ecstasy behind closed eyelids. It’s more than he can handle. And as Carlos’s ragged breathing slows down on the other end of the call, Cecil’s increases to desperate panting.

He’s only vaguely aware of Carlos saying something to him as his release wrenches through his system. Any words are drowned out by the thought his mind is practically screaming. _‘Please, please leave me here. Please leave me in this moment, don’t ever let me come down. Let me stay here where I can pretend. I can pretend you’re here through the heat and the sting and the pleasure. I don’t want to come down, to where it’s cold and lonely and you aren’t there. You aren’t there and I know it. I’ll know it and I won’t be able to pretend. Please, don’t leave.’_ He hopes the sob that escapes his lips sounds like a sob of pleasure.

Carlos is whispering a string of comforting trivialities in his ear. The heat in his veins subsides, and the cool bedroom air hits the sheen of sweat covering his skin. He shivers. He curls on his side to stop the chill. He pulls the t-shirt up over his nose, breathing in Carlos, waiting to feel the frantic thump of the heartbeat he’s snuggled himself against, like always.

He remembers.

“You okay, love?”

He’s cold. He’s alone. He’s empty and unsatisfied and trembling and sticky and the tears sting his eyes too quickly for him to fight back. He is not okay.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

 

It’s the things you didn’t know you took for granted.

The news has been different lately.

He knows how to deal with the management; he’d done it for years before, and getting back into step felt so familiar it was almost - _almost_ \- comforting. Intern… no, he shakes his head at the oft-repeated mistake, _Mayor_ Dana frequently holds press conferences that actually deal directly with the town. Sometimes he plays them on the air, in their entirety. They’re as fascinating and clever and important as she is.

Leaving the station feels different too.

Tonight it feels more different than usual.

Someone is there, a very small someone with a very tall some _thing_ behind her.

“Josie?” Cecil’s confusion is stronger than his excitement for a few seconds.

“Hello, Cecil,” she says with her impossibly warm smile. The Angel behind her does not exist, even if it seems to smile at him with the same warmth. Josie is holding a large picnic basket, large enough that Cecil is pretty certain the non-existent Erika behind her was the one who carried it to the station. “I brought you something.” She holds out the basket, as if an unannounced gift-giving at the radio station were the most normal thing she could do in that moment.

Cecil takes the basket in his uncertain hands. It’s surprisingly heavy. He looks up, showing his confusion rather than saying it.

She chuckles once through closed lips. “Erika just reminded me that once, a while back, you mentioned that dear Carlos always does the washing up after meals.” She smiles a little brighter. “That’s a lovely thing for him to do. I knew he was a good one. Always knew he’d be good to you. So what with…” her discomfort is palpable, but Cecil can tell it’s because she doesn’t want to pick words that could upset him. “I thought you might be getting tired of the extra work.”

He opens one side of the wicker lid.

Paper plates.

Styrofoam cups.

Plastic utensils.

Dozens of them. Maybe a hundred.

He remembers.

As he drops the basket to throw his arms around Josie, he realizes how long it’s been since he’s embraced anyone.

 

It’s the things that remind you that you’re completely, utterly… alone.

 

It’s the things that remind you…

The sound of the alarm tears through the room. Cecil doesn’t even flinch as he’s ripped out of a deep sleep. He refuses to open his eyes. He’s been through this before. He pulls one arm out from under the pillow and flails it to the side, as hard as he can. If muscle memory has served him well, his hand will hit the ‘OFF’ button without having to move across the empty bed.

“I thought I unplugged this damn fucking thing-”

_“ Ow! ”_

His eyes burst open.

He remembers.

His grin is instantaneous. “Sorry,” he murmurs, slowly pulling his arm away from the face he just accidentally smacked, “old habit.” His arm snakes across the bed, waiting until he hears the satisfying click of the ‘SNOOZE’ button before reaching out to ensnare his prey.

“Cecil,” Carlos laughs as his boyfriend pulls toward him like a leech.

The sounds that spill out of Cecil’s mouth in response are not coherent in any language, known or unknown. His limbs wrap around his boyfriend slowly, sleepily, adorably. Carlos attempts to shift beneath him, but is met with a clear “nuh-uh.”

Carlos gives a sigh that was probably intended to be admonishing. His arms wrap tighter around Cecil, one hand burying in his hair and the other trailing down his back. His mouth presses somewhere against his head. “Go back to sleep, love.”

Cecil makes a soft sound, nuzzling his face further into the t-shirt that he doesn’t have to wear anymore. “Mmm-hm.” He presses his ear to Carlos’s chest, waiting to feel the gentle thump of the heartbeat he’s snuggled himself against, like always-

_Thu-thump… Thu-thump… Thu-thump…_

****  
It’s the things that remind you that everything is alright.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! I am still completely emotionally incapable of dealing with the last episode, so I've returned to writing angst for it (but this time with a happy ending!) once again. If you want something less angsty, check out my other works for shameless Cecilos fluff. I love hearing from all of you, both here, and at my personal tumblr blog (my-nameless-bliss.tumblr.com).  
> Disclaimer: I own nothing of Night Vale, or its characters. I just do this on the slight, slight chance that I could bring any of you a ray of comfort in this dark time.


End file.
